World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Francis Gurry, speaking at the opening of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) seventh ministerial conference in Geneva on November 30, 2009, underlined the importance of innovation in dealing with some of today’s most pressing global challenges, namely economic recovery and climate change.
“As this Ministerial Conference opens, the world is facing two over-riding challenges – the challenge of finding the path to economic growth and the challenge of climate change,” Gurry observed, continuing: “Innovation lies at the heart of the solution to both of these challenges.”
Gurry noted that innovation’s “role as the residual source of economic growth has long been recognized and has been emphasized in many stimulus packages” and stressed that innovation will provide “the technological and organizational means for effecting the transformation of our carbon-based economy to a carbon-neutral or carbon-free economy”.
Innovation “is the space between problem and solution,” Gurry observed, adding that: “An effective and balanced intellectual property system plays a vital role in that space. WIPO is committed to such an effective and balanced system and to assisting countries in developing their innovation strategies.”
Addressing ministers from WTO’s 153 member states, Gurry noted the major changes in the economic and intellectual property landscape in the 15 years since the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights came into force.
He cited shifting production and trade patterns across the world, the rising value of intangibles in market capitalization, the growth of e-commerce, the convergence in the media of cultural expressions and the explosion in mobile telephony.
“These and other developments have ushered in the promise of a new world of innovation, one that is perhaps best described as a multi-polar one,” he suggested.
Gurry told ministers that the "geography of innovation" has changed markedly in recent years.
Fifteen years ago, the North East Asia countries of Japan, South Korea and China produced 7.6% of international patent applications. In 2008, they accounted for 26.2% of all international patent applications.
He also noted that enterprises have collaborated more in order to meet their innovation needs, a trend which has been driven by the complexity of technology and by network technologies which allow several entities around the world to participate in common projects.
The speed of these developments has important consequences for international organizations, Gurry stated.
“Will the multilateral process be able to respond in a timely manner to the world of multi-polar innovations?” he asked.
Gurry underlined the importance of technical infrastructure, such as global public assets (eg databases) which “can be every bit as important as legal architecture – platforms can be as important as treaties as vehicles for international cooperation”.
They are, he concluded, a “vital means of spreading the benefit of innovation, increasing participation in open innovation and improving the efficiency of technology markets”.
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